What I've been up to after The Iron Yard

I realized today that The Iron Yard’s Demo Day was exactly a month ago today. The time has flown by! While my holidays have been much more relaxed than The Iron Yard, its still been a busy enough time for me. I’ve been interviewing with several companies, reading and learning a lot, and getting some much needed sleep.

Interviewing, which I plan to write about more once I’ve accepted a position somewhere, has overall been a good experience. I’ve enjoyed learning about different companies and the kinds of technologies that they’re working with and what I would be using if I worked with them. It’s definitely a stressful and nerve wracking process, but overall its still pretty cool.

I’ve also just been learning a LOT. I’ve been putting in a lot of time to researching the specific niches that the companies I’m applying for work in and how to get at least a basic idea of what they do and what I’d be doing there before I interview. While The Iron Yard has taught me a lot about Python, there are still a lot of areas in and around the tech industry that I don’t know a lot about. I think its fair to say that thats not unlike most people (even veterans of the industry), but it certainly means I need to do a lot of legwork.

I’ve been doing little things like work on exercism tasks, playing with Flask, messing with a little bit of Ruby, and reworking some of my old code from The Iron Yard.

I’ve also been recovering a bit from the intensity of The Iron Yard. I really pushed myself hard, so while I think I’m still getting a good amount of work in, I’m also trying very hard to enjoy myself a little, get outside, play with my dog more, and catch up on the rest of my life before I dive into the tech industry in a full time role.